In a panel discussion, we explored the practicalities of redeploying staff with leading members of the HR community. We explored what is happening now and the importance of future workforce planning.

How has Redeployment Affected Staff?

Some of the deployed workers have been desperate to move back as they want to get back to business as usual. They are still there and need our support – even more so now than ever before.

“It’s all about keeping the dialogue open with the HR team. We don’t want surprises down the line. We make sure that we are there to support straight away if need be by sharing ideas from other authorities and sharing the knowledge to ensure we are on top of everything for all our clients.”

Ian Middleton, Business Director, Matrix SCM

What Measures have been put in Place to Support Them?

One client we spoke to has been redeploying staff and initiated a ‘here to help’ campaign for anyone with previous Care experience so they can capture their details on an online form and redeploy them to Care homes. This has shown to be effective with the increased amount of DBS checks that have been conducted.

The problem is not people undertaking their roles, it is delivering it differently. We want to make sure they are protected with social distancing. We are putting things in place with public health teams and health and wellbeing by releasing updates on intranet, so staff that haven’t been able to work are prepared and have the support before they come back.

Returning to ‘Normal’ Working Situations

From speaking to our clients, workers are keen to transition back from their redeployed roles to normal working situations. There needs to be an understanding of how these workers will transition back onto site by setting expectations for workers of what this will look like to help them adapt to the new way of working. On top of this, we must be aware that there could be another peak, which means we need to be prepared should for both scenarios.

How will this Change the Way We Work in the Future?

“Redeployment has forced communities to take workforce planning seriously. We have found skills in our workforce that we weren’t aware of or utilising correctly. To Ian’s point about dialogue, this planning will be important to ensure that our workforce planning is in place to support us in the future. For a lot of us, we are opening now, we need to explore how do we shut down quickly again or open quickly again if we need too. This could have an impact on wellbeing.”

Karen Grave, President of the PPMA

Want to find out more?

We went into further detail in the full panel discussion that can be found here >

On top of that we created a Workforce Planning Report that you can access by reaching out below.